I tucked my knitting needles away. Jim lowered his spear. Abby's fire extinguished. Apu put away her bow, and the stress in the room dissolved. “Whew. I was worried there, for a second,” Erika said, breaking into a smile.
Chad turned towards us with terrified eyes. "No. You don't understand. Last night... they were full."
“What?”
“They weren’t empty. They were full of bodies. Th-that… are now gone.”
"How many were in there? Total?" Erika barked.
"Th-thirty seven."
"Thirty-seven bodies? How many people die around here?" Eric yelled from the back.
"A lot." His eyes darted around the room nervously. "I mean, whenever the hospital thinks cause of death is related to monsters, they send them to me. I get a lot of random dead bodies."
"Oh, just great. And you keep them all here, huh? There are graveyards, you know–" Erika started.
"But we need time to tell the family. They need time to arrange a funeral. Sometimes we don't get the cause of death right away." He paused, nervously glancing over to the freezer. "Sometimes bodies are left here for a week. ...Or two, tops."
"And now they're loose. In the building." Erika said, rolling her eyes. "You're an incompetent fool, Chad."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "Hey. I'm trying my best, okay?"
"If this is your best, then I'd hate to see your worst! We have an actual necromancer on the loose, and you're sitting down here with thirty-seven dead bodies?! Do you not see the problem with that? Now we've got thirty-six undead, probably hiding out all through the building, ready to pounce at any moment!"
He crossed his arms. "Hey. I was just doing my job, okay? And I don't know how they got out. The security system locks the entire place up at night. I'm the only one who can enter—or leave."
"Well, clearly, you messed up!"
As they bickered, Abby pulled out her radio. "Hey, Thomas? Uh, thirty-six bodies disappeared from the morgue last night."
He replied with something I couldn't make out. Abby turned to us. "Thomas wants Indigo to take B2. Okay?"
"...B2?" I stuttered. "Why?"
"Reanimated bodies always go towards the ground, in the absence of direct orders from their necromancer," Jim said. "So, we should start on the basement floors."
"Wait." I nervously glanced from Jim to Abby. "I can't. I... I handed my resignation in this morning."
"What?!" Abby said. "So that’s what Thomas meant… No, no, you can't quit! We love you! And—this is the most dangerous event NIMP has had in a long time, so we kinda need Steele power, here."
I locked eyes with her. "Abby. It's my fault the Gravedigger is out in the first place. And Gavin nearly died trying to save me. I'm..." Powerless. That's what I wanted to say. But I couldn't tell them.
I couldn't tell them that it was even worse than they thought. I didn't innocently take the job, hoping to make the world a better, more monster-free place. It wasn't that I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn't that I'd made beginner's mistakes.
It was a lie from the start.
I came here out of selfishness. To make money. To prove myself to my family and friends. To heal a twenty-three year old wound.
And now the entire city—the entire world—would pay for that mistake.
But I couldn't bring myself to tell them. So I simply said: "I'm not cut out for this. I'm sorry."
I turned around and walked out of the morgue.
Abby and Jim followed me. Abby pulled me into a hug, and said into my shoulder: "Please don't leave. Don't."
"I agree," Jim said behind her.
I didn't know what to tell them. Especially when they were giving me such sad, puppy-dog faces. So I said: "I'll think about it. Okay?"
"Okay." Abby linked her arm with mine.
We started toward the elevator.
"Wait, wait! What should I do?" Chad called behind us.
"Make sure that last one doesn't go anywhere," I replied.
Then we stepped onto the elevator.
It opened at B1 first. Apu, Eric, and the guy with the Gandalf staff exited. Then the elevator continued down to B2. Anxiety built within me as we descended. I could imagine the racket of the monsters—the hissing, the screeching, the growling. I could almost feel their eyes on me, hungry and waiting.
Ding.
The doors slid back. We stepped forward, into the monster dungeon.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Every single cage was empty.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Thirty-six zombies and forty-two monsters that have collectively killed thousands." Gavin shook his head. “Have we found any of them?”
“Nope,” Abby replied. “The searches of NIMP didn’t turn up anything, and we’re waiting until nightfall to search the city. But look on the bright side!”
“What bright side?”
“We’re not dead yet!”
Gavin raised an eyebrow at her. “Yes, that’s great consolation, Abby. Thank you.”
The four of us sat in the medical ward. The nurses had wrangled Gavin back inside, after a rapid search for their missing patient. He finally obliged, and even accepted some of Jim's yarrow root cream. Abby sat at the foot of the bed, picking at her fuzzy pink socks. Jim was in the corner, shirtless, doing push-ups.
I understood Abby's reasons for hanging out here with Gavin—she had awesome motherly instincts. I also understood my own, which may or may not have involved romantic attraction. But I wasn't quite sure why Jim was still here. He kept saying he had important training to do, but he'd been doing exercises in the corner and randomly interrupting our conversation for an hour, now.
"I thought he only controlled fifty-six undead last time," I said, fidgeting with the knitting needle in my pocket. "Counting humans, and monsters... that brings the total to almost a hundred."
"We don't have the manpower," Jim said, switching to a one-armed push-up. "Or the weapons. Or the training."
"I thought Thomas called the other NIMP chapters, to see if they can send Hunters over," I said. "And he's notified the public. There's a mandatory curfew at 7 PM—"
"What good does that do? What, you think they burn up in the sunlight like vampires?" Gavin asked.
"They don't?"
"No. They generally don't attack during the day, because sunlight makes them much weaker. But it certainly doesn't kill them." He reached over to the nightstand, grabbed his glass, and took a sip of blood.
Jim nodded, and added: "Only thing that kills them is a shot through the middle of the head. It must be the exact center—can't be off by even an inch. That’s where the necromancer touched them to establish the initial neural connection, and that’s what we must destroy."
Abby chipped in. "At least there's a hotline for people to call, if they see any strange-looking people, or dead loved ones roaming the streets—"
"Oh, so the public knows we're dealing with zombies, now? Great." He reached over, and then clutched his side. "Dammit."
"Are you okay?"
He grimaced. "I'm fine." He pulled himself up in the bed, so he was sitting straighter, and adjusted the pillow behind him. "I'm sorry. I'm being a downer, aren't I?"
"A little bit," I said.
"Totally," Abby added.
"What do we do, then? Just wait until they attack?" I asked, wrapping yarn around the knitting needle. Thankfully, Chad's number was finally fading from my palm.
Jim pushed himself up from the corner and walked over. His bronze skin glistened with sweat, and the tattoos across his arms rippled with every stride. I tried not to stare.
And failed.
Gavin gave me a bemused glance.
"That's all we can do," Jim said, taking a seat next to me. "We don't know where they are. We have the cameras watching the city, and a few Hunters patrolling the cemeteries, but I'm skeptical of how effective that will be. They could be planning a sneak attack right now, and we would be dead before morning."
"Jim!" Abby said, swatting at his arm. "You're scaring her! Look how pale she is!"
"Thanks, Abby."
"I'm so tired of this place," Gavin said, staring at the ceiling. "I feel like a bloody prisoner. Can't I just leave for a spot of tea? I'll be back in ten minutes."
"A-ha! You do like tea!" I said, a smile crossing my face.
"Fine. I do."
"Do you also like crumpets?"
He narrowed his eyes at me. "I'm not going to dignify that with an answer."
"Sssshh, you guys," Abby said, pointing to the TV. "They're talking about it. Look."
A man stood in front of the camera. Deep circles under his eyes, face grim. "There is a citywide curfew of 7 PM, and a hotline to call if you see any suspicious activity. According to authorities, we are in a state of emergency. But what is the emergency, exactly? We don't know."
He walked over to a group of college-aged boys on the sidewalk. "My name is Robin, and I'm with MBC news. Tell me—what are your thoughts on the city's so-called 'state of emergency'?"
"Dude, it's zombies, didn't you hear?" the portly blond man said. "The zombie apocalypse."
"Shut up, Ben," the second college guy said. "Zombies don't exist. You're an idiot."
"Dude, the radio literally said to be on the lookout for dead people."
"No, it said to look for people who appear to have decaying skin due to a highly contagious disease."
"That's the same thing."
"No, it isn't!"
"Okay, fellas," the newscaster interjected. "Any other thoughts?"
"No... except... GO PANTHERS!"
The camera swiveled back to the newscaster.
I turned my eyes back to my knitting. The indigo-colored scarf was about a quarter done—but the stitches were terribly uneven. I'd knitted them tight, then loose, indicating my rapidly-fluctuating stress levels. "I thought we were supposed to keep the whole zombie thing on the DL."
"When we have a state of emergency, it's difficult," Jim said. "There's a fine line between keeping secrecy and protecting the general public."
I nodded.
The television switched to another scene. A man standing on his lawn, crossbow in his hands. Behind him was a steel door that led into the ground.
"This man says he's been preparing for the 'zombie apocalypse' for decades," the reporter said—now a prim-looking woman with coiffed blonde hair. "Tell me, Mr. Brown, what do you have in your bunker?"
"Twenty years' supply of food," he said in a thick, Southern drawl. "Clothing, toiletries, guns. Five electrical generators in case the power goes out. Tons of books." He looked at her with a grin of yellowed teeth and said, "Ten-thousand square feet of underground paradise."
“That sounds dumb. Considering zombies gravitate towards the ground,” I said.
“We all gravitate towards the ground,” Jim replied.
I shot him a look. “You know what I mean.”
"And how much are you charging those who secure a spot in your bunker?" the reporter asked.
"Fifty-thousand dollars," the man replied. “Only twenty-five thousand for children under the age of—”
"Turn that rubbish off," Gavin complained.
Abby complied.
We sat in uneasy silence, broken only by Jim's breaths as he resumed his push-ups.
Four hours until the sun sets, I thought.
I tucked my knitting needles in my pocket, rolled up my yarn, and stared out the window.
Four hours.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The sun had set.
The sky had faded into a deep blood-red. Possibly, a harbinger of the bloodshed tonight.
Don't think like that, I told myself. Stay positive.
The nurses had kicked us all out early. Before visiting hours were over. They were muttering something about how we were a 'bad influence' on their patient. I'm not sure where Abby and Jim went, but I just decided to go home.
Home.
I thought I wouldn't be calling this decrepit apartment "home" much longer, given the grand Hunter salary. I looked around at the stained walls, the shredded carpet. A cluster of ants had found the coke can I'd left out on the coffee table, and they slurped up the remaining bits all too greedily.
Hmmm. Gavin was right.
I am a slob.
I stood up, grabbed the coke can, and dumped it in the recycling bin. Sighing, I walked back over to the couch. I sat down, but my knitting needles—still in my pocket—poked me sharply in the butt. "Gah," I groaned. I took my jeans off and set them across the table. Then I lay across the pillows, propped my head up, and stared at the ceiling.
I pulled out my phone. Scrolled through Facebook. Photos of random people I barely even remembered from college stared back at me. And, after that—a photo of Adam Tsang.
With his arm around some girl I didn’t recognize.
I’d forgotten him in the whirlwind of NIMP. Now, in the dark silence of my apartment, the hurt stabbed at me. I set my phone on the table and closed my eyes.
I don't know how long I was awake, but it wasn't long. Soon fatigue pulsed through my blood like a drug. My eyes fluttered closed.
***
Brzt. Brzt.
"Kira?"
The voice came from the table, across the room. I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head.
"Kira!"
Shut up. Let me sleep.
"Emergency!"
I threw off the covers and stumbled towards it. "Ow!" I hissed, as my toe collided with something. I looked down to see a fork, encrusted with dried cheese, lying on the carpet. "Eugh."
I grabbed the radio off the table. "Kira here." My voice came out crackly and dry, making me sound like one of the undead.
"We have a situation."
"Abby?"
"Come down to the cemetery on 3rd Street, right now."
"But I need to get dressed, and—I don't even work at NIMP anymore—"
"See you soon."
Click.
I groped in the darkness. My hands fell on my jeans from yesterday. I pulled them on, then grabbed my tank top. Then I shuffled out the door, into the cold, and into my car.
Just my ordinary car. I’d left the monster truck at NIMP when I resigned. The engine coughed, sputtered, then finally thrummed to life underneath me.
The clock read 11:37 PM. I'd hardly gotten five hours of sleep. No wonder I felt like crap.
I turned onto the road, heading towards 3rd street. A pair of headlights swept down the road in the opposite direction, lighting up the night. Then they passed, and I was plunged into darkness again.
The skyscrapers loomed ahead, tiny yellow lights blending in with the stars above. I made a left, bypassing the heart of the city.
When I got to the cemetery, I found three monster trucks identical to mine parked on the curb. One sported a bumper sticker that read: ELVIS IS STILL ALIVE!
Definitely Abby's.
I found the three of them clustered at the entrance. "Kira! You're here!" Abby said with an enthusiastic wave.
All of them had rolled out of bed. Gavin's hair stuck straight up in patches. Jim and Abby were wearing full pajamas—the former in lobster ones, the latter in cat ones. She yawned every five seconds; Jim stabbed his spear repeatedly into the ground, as if aerating the soil.
"Someone reported hearing strange noises inside," Jim said, gesturing to the dark cemetery. Tombstones poked through the grass like crooked teeth. "Follow me. Weapons out."
"I don't have a weapon," I said. "That undead guy stole it."
"You don't need a weapon!" Abby said. "You have those awesome telepathic powers! You can just, like, will the zombie to decapitate itself."
“That would be telekinetic, not telepathic,” Jim corrected.
"Abby, when I'm tired, it's very hard for me to summon the powers. It's better if I have a weapon."
Gavin quickly turned away, hiding a laugh. When he was done, he reached around to his holster and handed me a gun. "Don't sho
ot anything that isn't already dead."
"Got it," I said. "Wait—shouldn't you be back in the medical ward?"
"I escaped again. Sssshhh."
"As long as you're not on pixie dust, again."
He rolled his eyes. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you? It was one time—"
"One time. Yesterday. That means this week, you're one for one."
He sighed, exasperated. "No, I'm not on pixie dust, all right?"
"Kira, I've got an extra spear." Jim pulled out a small tube. Pop! With a flick of his wrist, it expanded into a long spear. "It's light, but it'll protect you –"
"I feel safer with the gun," I said. No way I was going to get up close and friendly with a member of the undead.
Jim scowled at me. "Fine," he said, sulking.
"Remember to click the safety off," Gavin added.
"You think I don't know that?"
"You didn't know last time."
"True." I paused. "Did anyone ever catch that doll-woman?"
"Not to my knowledge."
That was a freaky thought. A doll-controlling witch and the undead on the loose? Basically two of my worst fears.
We stalked through the cemetery. The grass crunched beneath our feet. The air felt warmer than when I'd left the house. To our left, we passed the hulking shadow of a mausoleum. The iron grate over the door was slightly bent.
I shuddered.
We continued through the rows of tombstones. "How big is this place?" I whispered, gun pointing into the darkness.
"Extends all the way to 4th Street," Gavin replied.
My flashlight fell on the statue of an angel, perched on one of the tombs. Her granite skin was flecked with gray and black, and her face was eroded smooth by wind and rain. As Abby walked by with a tiny flame in her hand, the statue glinted orange. It seemed to move and breathe in the flickering light.
"That's not creepy at all," I said.
"Ah, we'll be fine. I've seen worse," Abby said.
"Worse?"
"Yeah. You know that episode of Doctor Who with the weeping angels? Basically, exactly that."
A shudder coursed through my body.
"Kira, mind handing me your torch?” Gavin asked, from the darkness on my left.
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